From the CEO: Earth Day 2018

This past weekend, we celebrated another year of Earth Day. Earth Day has always been very important in my life, but this year was particularly special as I reminisced about my roots and looked towards the future of the company we’re building in Nikola Power.

I was raised by mom and dad to protect and enjoy the outdoors. In the early 1970s, my Dad turned off the heat in our suburban home and announced we were going to heat our home with a wood burning stove from wood gathered from dead trees at the end of our cul-de-sac. My mom and dad started one of the first recycling programs in our neighborhood, took us on hikes, and enrolled me in wilderness camps to learn to appreciate the rugged natural beauty of our planet.

In college, I began my political exploration and started working in environmental policy and politics. I was invited to the U.S. Senate by my sister, a summer intern in Washington D.C., and got to see Senator Biden, Gore, and others debating the Ozone layer and Global Warming — I was immediately hooked.

After college, I began my career at the intersection of policy, politics, and activism. I worked in Washington DC as a canvasser for Clean Water Action, raising money over the phone to save inland waterways under threat from energy industry pollution and runoff. During the day, I volunteered for the League of Conservation Voters, ranking members of congress and driving awareness for environmental and conservation issues being debated in Congress.

In the early 1990s, I did political and policy work for the Friends of the Earth, League of Conservation Voters, and the National Audubon Society. Earth day in the early 1990s was a huge opportunity to change the direction of public policy — I was part of new wave of organizing big events across the nation, bussing voters in from around the country for a two-day rally on the Washington D.C. mall. We had bands, elected officials, celebrities and bi-partisan support for global change on ozone and climate policy. I was also fortunate to work on re-authorizing the Endangered Species Act — a landmark bi-partisan piece of legislation signed by Republican President Richard Nixon after a wave of early Earth Day inspired changes in 1970s. These experiences were invaluable in cementing my values to celebrate our planet and putting me on a path towards the renewable energy industry today.

Historically, the early days of Earth Day celebrations in the 1970s brought about the creation of the EPA, the Clean Air Act, The Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act. This framework of policy, programs and commitments have fundamentally changed our country for the better. I am proud of my small part of history, but also excited to lead a new generation of young innovators here at Nikola Power. At Nikola Power we are on a mission to make energy storage the winner of the next frontier of energy. With better data on energy storage, we can make better decisions on how, when, and why to operate our battery systems. Nikola Power is at the forefront of energy storage, our technology will open the door for a massive increase in clean sources of power (solar & wind). With an established energy storage industry, we can manage intermittent renewable sources and create clean base load and distributed power for our new modern grid. At Nikola Power, every day is Earth Day because we are working as a business to drive innovation to create the transformation to a new grid powered by clean renewable sources of power.